Dominic Greene's All The Light We Cannot See

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All the Light We Cannot See, written by Anthony Doerr, is set within WWII. The storyline involves two characters, Werner, a young German orphan who becomes a Nazi, and a blind, French girl Marie-Laure. Ironically, Marie-Laure is blind, yet she can see true morality and Werner, who has perfect vision, is blind to the reality of what is right in front of him. Dominic Greene's "One-Armed Nazis and Albino Children: The Year's Surprise Bestseller Turns the Holocaust into a Sentimental Mess.” criticizes Doerr’s novel because the novel contains beautiful imagery and sensitive story lines that are mostly focused on the child victims of the war. He finds these elements focus the reader on irrelevant concepts, such as the looks of the characters and sugarcoats the reality of the war.
Doerr’s goal was to show the impact of the war was shown from two different points of view of the victims, Marie-Laure and Werner. Indeed, throughout the novel, the “enemy” is not what readers expect it to be. Werner never has a choice in his decisions …show more content…

Instead of having one side and only one experience be told, the audience is given two points of view to realize that neither side is wholly good or bad. Green sees Werner’s point of view as something problematic due to the fact that Werner is portrayed as innocent. While this is true, Green fails to understand Doerr’s goal to portray the characters as neither wholly good or evil. Werner is a child of war, and sometimes he did not have any choice or had a chance to own his life for example, when Werner suggests that Frederick should leave ‘Your problem, Werner,’ says Frederick, ‘is that you still believe you own your life.’ ” (Doerr 223).Green sees this as forgetting the immorality of the Germans since the story “diminish [es] the moralistic aura that comes with

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